Republicans struggle to respond as Democrats highlight the Alabama IVF ruling
More than a week after the Alabama Supreme Court declared that frozen embryos produced for in vitro fertilization were human beings with legal rights, upending fertility care in the state, the ruling is resonating nationally, prompting Republicans in be put on the defensive.
On CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who supported former President Donald J. Trump, was asked about the implications of the ruling — made possible by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade . in his 2022 Dobbs decision, which resulted from Mr. Trump’s appointment of three justices.
Mr. Abbott sought to portray IVF, which has been available for more than four decades, as a new issue facing lawmakers.
“Because this is a relatively new issue, we will have to find ways to navigate the laws and facts, situations that are very complicated,” he said.
IVF typically involves creating multiple embryos, but implanting only one at a time to maximize the chances of a healthy pregnancy, meaning the remaining embryos are frozen and some are never used. Mr Abbott acknowledged he did not know the details, saying: “I have no idea mathematically – the number of frozen embryos, is that one, 10, 100, 1,000? Those kinds of things are important.” (A often cited study from 2011 found that the ideal number of eggs to collect was 15, but numbers vary widely depending on age and other factors.)
Mr. Abbott also asked questions, such as what happens if someone with frozen embryos dies or gets divorced, which have long been the subject of discussion among IVF patients, doctors and lawyers.
“I’m not sure everyone has really thought about what all the potential problems are, and as a result, no one really knows what the possible answers are,” he said when CNN host Dana Bash asked whether families in Texas are pursuing IVF. should be concerned.”
After the Alabama ruling rocked the presidential and congressional campaigns last week, Trump said Friday he supported IVF and that Alabama lawmakers should take action to protect it. And the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate campaign arm of Republicans, said the party’s candidates should “join the public’s overwhelming support for IVF.”
When asked on CNN whether such comments “undermine” Democrats’ criticism of Republicans, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who is supporting President Biden’s reelection, said, “No, they don’t.”
“We’ve always known that, with the appointments that Donald Trump has made at the Supreme Court of the United States, that IVF, a woman’s ability to make her own decisions about her body and all the panoply of things that come from that into were in danger. ,” she said. “And so this ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court is a natural extension of that.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose political organization on Sunday announced an ad campaign against a Tennessee bill that would make it a crime for an adult to help a minor obtain an abortion without parental consent, said on NBC News’s ‘Meet the Press” that Mr. Trump “was still trying to figure out exactly where he stands, as he celebrates the fact that he created these circumstances in the first place.”
That was a reference to Mr. Trump’s boast that, by appointing Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, he had done what Republican presidents before him had failed to do: create a conservative creating the supermajority that overturned Roe. against Wade. Without it, the language in the Alabama Constitution that the state court cited would have been unenforceable.
Many Republicans have struggled to oppose the outcome of the Alabama ruling while supporting the principle on which it is based. Nikki Haley did so on Wednesday, saying it was important to allow doctors and patients to freely navigate the IVF process, while also saying embryos are people; She then said that just because she believed that didn’t mean everyone had to.
That theme continued on the Sunday morning talk shows, with Rep. Byron Donalds, Republican of Florida, running back previous comments in which he had told a reporter that he agreed that embryos were children. Mr. Donalds told NBC on Sunday that he had “only heard half of her question, but do I support the IVF procedure?” One hundred percent, I do that.” He added that he would be open to federal legislation to protect IVF, depending on the details.
On “This Week” on ABC News, Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat who had her children through IVF and who has introduced a bill to protect it, said that “not a single Republican” senator had contacted her to support her bill. sign. .
“Republicans will say whatever they want to say to cover themselves up about this, but they have been clear,” Ms. Duckworth said. “And Donald Trump has been the man who has led this effort to eliminate women’s reproductive rights and reproductive choice.”